Attendee:
How has the federal government going to secure a smooth rollout for indigenous and minority communities?
Teresa Leger Fernandez:
We are being very deliberate. We have met with the Biden’s White House to make sure there was an equitable distribution to those communities that are most impacted. The Biden White House actually has someone who is specifically on board to look at the equitable distribution of the vaccine. Now, we need to remember that the COVID relief bill, that we are passing has $14 billion for the vaccine. It has $46 billion for testing, contact tracing, mitigation, and another $25 billion to address health disparities. We are very cognizant of the fact that we need to make sure that the distribution of the vaccine is equitable.
Attendee:
I wanted to ask you if you know about house joint resolution 48, which is the bill to overturn Citizens United, essentially. And I want to know if you’d be willing to be a co-sponsor of that bill.
TLF:
Absolutely. You know, I believe that our democracy really thrives when everybody has access to the ballot and when everybody’s vote is heard equally. And overturning Citizens United is such an important point to be able to return us to a place where people’s voices are the loudest that are to be heard. We will be hearing on Thursday, the committee on house administration, the case for HR1. They are the committee that actually has jurisdiction over our federal election law. I encourage everybody if you’re available to join in, we’re going to be bringing experts to talk about what does it mean to make sure that we have full disclosure of money in politics so that we don’t have dark money anymore. What does it mean to make it easier for people to vote?
Attendee:
I actually have three questions. The top three is student debt, Medicare for All, and ending the drug war and legalizing cannabis.
TLF:
Thank you for the three questions. I’ll take the first two. I think the third one I’ll touch on, but right now that’s being addressed primarily at the state level. Medicare for All: I ran saying I was a strong supporter of Medicare for All. This pandemic has shown us that having a health system and health coverage that is dependent on your employment is very difficult because so many people lost their jobs and in losing their jobs, they lost their health insurance. What we need to do is look at the principles that Medicare for All talks about and say, how do we get these principles met? And that is that we need to lower the cost of prescription medication. You know, I’m a cancer survivor. I know what it’s like to have to take a lot of prescription drugs. When I was diagnosed, there were four of us in my family within a two year period who were diagnosed, and I’m the only one living now.
And so I know what it means to get good care and what it means to not get good care or to not get diagnosed early enough, and when the system fails us. Because if your deductible is so high, that you can’t afford it, that’s not accessible, affordable medical care. Drug prices need to come down and medical care needs to be affordable and accessible. And when I say affordable, it means affordable. Not that you have insurance but your deductibles or your copays are so high that you really don’t get medical care. It needs to be accessible in the sense that it needs to be available in your community. The Medicare for All bill covers a lot of that, but it’s those principles that I’m going to be pushing in whatever bills move forward to make sure that we get those principles into law so that everybody has affordable, accessible healthcare in their communities.
You also asked about the student loan crisis. That crisis is a drag on our economy. Delinquent and defaulted borrowers are struggling, were struggling to meet those debts before the pandemic, and this current economic downturn has exacerbated those. So I support efforts to provide loan forgiveness for student borrowers. I think that it is wrong that our corporations pay less in terms of interest on their debt than our students do.
On cannabis, we’re going to see what the state of New Mexico does. I think at the federal level, if we can’t get the votes to legalize, I would like us to hopefully have the Biden administration agree that his department of justice will not engage in any enforcement on the federal level in those states that have legalized cannabis.
Attendee:
My question is around climate crisis. And how do you see the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy occurring in New Mexico? What kind of a timeline do you see and what kind of measures need to be taken?
TLF:
If we don’t take action, we are going to see that New Mexico will not be able to survive the way we know it. I am very supportive of Biden’s plan to transition. We should have been doing this stuff 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, four years ago. But now we’ve got some timelines that we’re still going try to do with the Paris accord. The other thing that we need to do is in New Mexico, we recognize that we are dependent on oil and gas for some of our revenues. And so we must do those changes in a way that allows us to develop a robust alternative economy so that we can have a diversified economy that isn’t so reliant on a single industry. Because let’s face it, that industry goes up and down in New Mexico–Oh, wait, we have a lot of money this year! Wait a minute, the Russians have cut prices and we are in crisis mode because the oil and gas prices have fallen. Wait, the prices have gone up! That seesaw that we face in New Mexico, so dependent on a single industry, is really bad for us. So what I want us to do is start planning and getting some of the federal dollars we need to start diversifying our economy. What I also say is that we cannot abandon those communities that have fueled America’s progress with our oil and gas development. And we need to make sure that we invest in those communities. We invest in the transition. The world is gonna end up moving to a green economy and we need to lead the way in New Mexico rather than being left behind.
Attendee:
I’m a paramedic with the Dixon volunteer fire department. And one of the things that I have noticed is an issue in rural areas of the state is that when people are admitted in hospital and then discharged, that sometimes the situation that they go back home to is not the best in terms of maintaining their state of health, and they tend to bounce back to the emergency room. So my question is whether there’s anything that can be done at the federal level to help incentivize outreach in people’s homes, particularly after they’ve been in the hospital or in the emergency room, in order to address issues that potentially could be addressed to prevent them from bouncing back.
TLF:
I love this question because it’s not so much of a question that I have an answer to, but rather is a question that says, I don’t know, sometimes you don’t have the answer to it. And it’s like, but this is a great idea. What can we do to make sure that our rural areas, that people are getting the care. Because they’re no longer right next to the hospital. And so I am going to take your question and I’m going to talk to staff and say, let’s find an answer to that. Is there anything we could do in the manner in which reimbursements are made? Are there ways in which we can particularly call out this kind of care and provide a higher reimbursement? Is there a way that we can license and certify people in rural area to provide that kind of care and then provide the pipeline so that people who are from the rural areas to really want to stay there can say, this is something I could do. I could maybe go and get my certification and be somebody who is able to provide this kind of care in Dixon or in Mosquero or in Wagon Mound and some of these smaller areas. And this could be my job and my business. So your question really is something that is going to provoke among me and my staff and my colleagues, more discussions of how do we meet this and how in meeting this need, are we able to perhaps create opportunities for somebody who might want to start a small business to do just that. So thank you very much for your question and your idea. It’s got us thinking.
